I originally posted a flaming, angry message, but later reconsidered it and revised the post. When I revised it, I probably left too little of what I was trying to say. I recognize that no one here has any way of knowing what another user may, or may not, do with any helpful information they glean from this forum. I was very angry initially, but now we are speaking with an attorney as well as the selling institution to find the best recourse for blatant copying of original art and website designs.
It appears that some "website designers" just blur out the words on a piece of art, and replace them with their own website names, in order to retain some of the detailed and meticulously created parts of the artwork. Which is fine and dandy when you get the art from a template company, or artwork website, or from another source of that type. But just taking it for your own, from another unwitting designer, is not nice, not creative, not ethical, and -- according to our attorney -- not at all legal. We are looking into the best ways of documenting and tracing the artwork.
Thanks for your reply. I did not intend to imply that any helpful response anyone gave in this instance, was not the perfectly polite thing to do on a forum such as this.
And fyi... the effect was created with a simple feathered delete of one color layer over the other! I couldn't tell you how much I feathered it, or how many times I hit the delete key, I was just trying to like what I was doing.
lol!